New Mexico is well known for its long stretches of fiery deserts, rich Native American culture and spicy food that can make people tough-as-nails drop to their knees and cry. What it isn’t known for: its startup scene, at least not in the same way as tech-heavy metropolises like San Francisco and New York.
That doesn’t mean, though, that people who live there don’t want to be a part of it.
“This is the kind of place where I want to raise my child, and with my wife finishing [school], it became more apparent that I needed to stay in Albuquerque. But there weren’t really that many options for tech work,” says Jackson Stakeman, 36, who left the California coast five years ago to be close to his parents, both of whom retired in Albuquerque. “I was getting pulled back to California, and it’s just not what I wanted.”
Stakeman eventually found work locally as a programming analyst and is now a senior consultant at Rural Sourcing Inc. (RSI), which provides IT resources in second- and third-tier cities around the country. But his plight to find a tech gig in a tech desert — no pun intended — is not anecdotal.
In 2015, close to 60,000 computer science degree-holders graduated from American colleges. Many of them live in what’s derisively called “flyover country” and have had to choose between leaving their cities or finding different work. With the concentration of tech companies located on the coasts, hiring managers have historically been forced to either recruit workers to relocate to these tech hubs or hire abroad.
All that has started to change, though, as both uncertain immigration policies and an increasingly expensive offshore workforce have pushed companies to seek talent in less-known U.S. cities.
Though some major companies, such as IBM, have pushed for hiring Americans in the wake of the current administration’s call for keeping jobs at home, others, like General Electric and Walmart, caught on years ago and began refocusing on “reshoring,” also known as domestic outsourcing, well before the modern rallying cry from the White House.
Between 2009 and 2011, 26 percent of American companies were looking to use offshore services. Two years later, that number dropped three points while interest in reshoring increased by 10 percentage points, according to a report by The Economist.
Much of the shift has to do with the costs associated with offshore work, which has increased in the past decade.
The internet initially made India and China prosperous for their ability to provide cheap labor to help design and build websites. But companies have become frustrated with the offshoring model, particularly as technology has advanced well beyond simple click-and-scroll websites to more interactive and complex ones — all of which require increased communication and response times from programmers.
“It takes so much overhead to manage a team offshore so that you can get over all the societal differences and language barriers. The reality is you can do it a lot better and faster if you just pick up a phone and talk with someone,” says Heather Terenzio, CEO of Techtonic Group, an outsourcing software development company in Boulder, Colo. “Everybody has a horror story about offshore outsourcing.”
That frustration isn’t uncommon, according to Monty Hamilton, CEO of RSI, where Stakeman works. With headquarters in Atlanta and four development centers elsewhere, including Albuquerque, RSI provides domestic outsourcing for larger companies by hiring programmers to work remotely from wherever they happen to live, whether that be the Midwest or the Mountain West.
“Offshoring was very good when it was a prescriptive solution,” Hamilton tells NationSwell. “But when it’s a more creative idea, now you have to add some people who can ask critical questions.”
Those critical questions often go unanswered when outsourcing to foreign workers who are more rote in their objectives, says Hamilton. He adds that the costs that come with hiring American aren’t significant enough to merit continuing an offshore practice.
“What used to be a 5-to-1 pay gap [between domestic and offshore workers] for professional development is now a 2-to-1 gap,” he says. “The gap is not worth the inconvenience factor.”
Indeed, the costs of offshore outsourcing have risen, with wages increasing nearly 72 percent each year between 2000 and 2008 in emerging countries, according to a 2013 report by the International Labour Organization (though that trend has reversed in some Asian countries).
Anecdotally, Terenzio agrees, telling NationSwell that while Techtonic hired offshore workers in Eastern Europe for 10 years, it experienced its own set of difficulties.
“We were finding that we had to write up every instruction with so much level of detail that we realized we could just train a junior developer in the U.S. with much more ease,” she says. “We’ve seen firsthand our productivity and efficiency go up, and our headaches go down.”
By hiring domestically for their IT and other tech needs, U.S. companies seem to be catching on.
“What we’ve seen is that people in tertiary cities would really like to make $50,000 to $60,000 as a programmer,” Terenzio says. Though that stands in stark contrast to the high six-figure incomes that developers in Silicon Valley can command, the cost of living in the Bay Area dwarfs most other places. Hiring workers in small towns is a win-win, she adds: “Wages there are lower, and people there are dying for those jobs. If you can outsource to India, you can outsource to somewhere in the U.S.”
And there’s a community benefit, as more people in smaller cities want to get in on the higher salaries that tech offers and keep those dollars in the local economy.
“Denver is my home, and I felt like I could navigate myself here in any path that I took,” says Barry Maldonado, a project manager at Techtonic, speaking of his time figuring out a career move from the nonprofit world to tech. “There were guys I knew who were younger than me and really succeeding not only in their positions but also in the financial side of life, which was one thing I still needed to work on.”
Maldonado enrolled in a coding bootcamp and was hired by Techtonic as a junior developer. His financial situation has “changed drastically,” he says.
Stakeman, the Albuquerque analyst, says that even though he no longer commands a West Coast salary, what he pays in New Mexico for his two-story home with a three-car garage is about the same as he did when living in a studio apartment in Southern California.
When asked if he was living comfortably, despite forgoing a six-figure salary, Stakeman was succinct: “Oh yeah. Oh yeah.”
Continue reading “Creating Big-City Jobs in Small-Town America”
Tag: jobs
This Nonprofit Has Hit on the Way to Keep Ex-Offenders Out of Prison
On a gray morning earlier this year, former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey was talking with Omari Atiba, a convicted felon, in Newark when they were interrupted by Atiba’s phone. As the recently released prisoner’s cell blasted the ’70s disco staple “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” McGreevey couldn’t help but nod along, full white-man-overbite style.
Few could blame the former politician for feeling upbeat. For the past three years, McGreevey — no stranger himself to controversy, having resigned his governorship in 2004 — has been working to remove the obstacles that face ex-inmates once they’re released. On the morning they met, Atiba was just two days out of a New Jersey state prison, where he served 30 years for murder.
Transforming ex-convicts like Atiba into responsible, engaged civilians is a project that has earned McGreevey the support of Chris Christie and four other former Garden State governors. It also led him to John Koufos, a former criminal defense lawyer whose own fall from grace after a drunken hit-and-run accident in 2012 resulted in disbarment and 16 months in prison. Today, Koufos is second-in-command at New Jersey Reentry Corporation (NJRC), the nonprofit founded by McGreevey in 2014.
NJRC has five outposts in the state, including Jersey City, Kearney, Newark, Paterson and Toms River. Its mission is to overhaul onetime prisoners’ lives by overseeing their sobriety, and training and placing them in meaningful jobs. The ambitious project carries an annual price tag of $3 million, which is funded largely by the state.
With a roster of around 1,600 clients, NJRC’s success rate has been praised by the Manhattan Institute as among the best of the New York City–area reentry prison programs. According to a recent analysis by the think tank, U.S. prisons release approximately 650,000 inmates every year. Within the first 12 months, more than half are unable to secure identification and jobs that earn them enough legal income to survive.
But certain programs, like NJRC’s, are proving successful in preventing such scenarios. From January to July 2016, NJRC placed around 1,000 former prisoners in jobs spanning sales, transportation, food services, manufacturing and public works, many with on-ramps to more lucrative positions with building-trade unions.
That 62 percent job-placement rate likely helped NJRC achieve its low 19.7 percent recidivism. Though that figure is impressive, it spans just six months; the true measure of success will be where these former inmates are five years from now. As the most recent national survey by the Department of Justice found, an estimated three-quarters of ex-offenders are arrested for a new crime within five years of release.
Understanding McGreevey’s and Koufos’ backgrounds helps explain their strategy. McGreevey, as former governor, knows New Jersey influencers, like the chair of the state DMV, and has persuaded them to do things like untangle knotty driver’s records to clear a path toward regaining the right to drive, often essential to maintaining a job. And Koufos, who handled hundreds of pro bono cases for the NAACP before he went to prison, has recruited close to 70 young lawyers to clear up unresolved past infractions such as traffic tickets that can, and often do, return former inmates to their cells.
“It’s incredibly sad,” McGreevey said. “So many of our clients have a sense that catastrophe is right around the corner.”
Sadder still is that often they’re right. Koufos says missteps like missed child support payments can easily secure ex-offenders a return ticket to prison. “A lot of times folks don’t participate in family court” because they’re scared of the outcome, which may include fines. “When they have a lawyer holding their hand, they’re no longer afraid.”
Though they are both the heroes of their own second acts, Koufos and McGreevey are an odd couple. McGreevey studied to be a priest after resigning his Trenton post. Koufos’ wobbly relationship with religion surfaces only at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. “More jobs, less Jesus,” Koufos often reminds McGreevey when they’re talking to clients. But ultimately McGreevey is less concerned with helping clients find God than with helping them find footing in a social landscape built to topple them.
He meets weekly with prisoners across New Jersey to explain NJRC’s mission as well as his own rocky road to redemption. He was the closeted gay governor who left in disgrace, he reminds prisoners. What if it had taken him until his deathbed to come to the realizations that have helped him move forward?
Both men see every day as a chance to stub out others’ doomsday narratives. Atiba, the convicted murderer, now weighs fish in the seafood department at Newark’s ShopRite.
And Patrick D’Aiuto, who once lived in the cell across from Koufos and was released from prison in 2013 after 18 years for armed robbery, is now a commercial roofer with a union. He makes in the high $20s per hour and recently bought a condo.
“I spent pretty much my whole adult life in prison, and I knew that a lot of these programs can be tongue-in-cheek. I always wondered, Why doesn’t the media go to these people who claim to run these great programs and say, ‘If you actually helped someone get a good job, produce that person.’ They’d never be able to produce anybody.”
NJRC, D’Aiuto says, is different: “They’re not just getting guys jobs at Burger King. They’re getting them jobs with benefits that will get them a middle-class existence, so they can lead a productive life.”
Not that they succeed every time. A healthy percentage of clients, most of whom are addicts being treated through NJRC’s recovery channels, relapse. If a client is using, he gets a warning. If there is a second infraction, he’s out. Koufos is generally the one who does the kicking out.
He doesn’t mind, though.
“I dedicated myself to a life of service because of the pain I caused when I was addicted,” Koufos says. “If we can help the next guy recover, we stop the next victim from happening.”
Continue reading “This Nonprofit Has Hit on the Way to Keep Ex-Offenders Out of Prison”
Raising the Minimum Wage to $15
Seattle and San Francisco began raising their hourly minimum wage to $15 in 2015. Now Washington, D.C., and New York City are following their lead, and Democratic leaders in Congress have endorsed a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024.
But even as the fight for $15 gains new support in major cities around the country, many state-level congressional leaders are pushing back. In Minnesota, for example, lawmakers are trying to pass a measure that would prevent Minneapolis from paying its workers $15 an hour. A similar challenge is underway in Missouri, even while 10 other states reportedly have bills under consideration (and under challenge) to raise state hourly rates to $12 or $15.
Why the concern? While cities that pay workers more say that it’s sustainable, some economists predict people will lose their jobs en mass.
WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS
Multiple private and public studies show that an hourly boost of a couple bucks gives workers thousands of dollars more each year. In some cases, the bigger paycheck has taken them out of poverty. But in others, it can leave them without a job.
“We have not seen evidence of any substantial negative effect to date,” says Dean Baker, co-director at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research. “These increases have had large payoffs for low wage workers.”
A 2014 Congressional Budget Office study found that boosting the minimum wage to $10.10 nationwide would add $31 billion to the pockets of low-income American workers. (Money that would likely be spent on necessities like food, diapers, gasoline and clothing, not socked away for a rainy day.) But it also acknowledged that doing so would cause half a million jobs to disappear.
MORE: The Jobs Robots Won’t Take
Fiscal conservatives claim that the number of people who become unemployed could be even greater. A 2015 study conducted by the American Action Forum, a right-leaning policy research group, found that raising the hourly minimum wage to $15 would cause unemployment to skyrocket, with 6.6 million jobs lost nationwide. Plus, only 6.7 percent in added wages would reach the people that need it — those living below the poverty line.
A CASE STUDY
Currently, Seattle is the only city paying a $15 minimum wage for workers in large companies. Other cities are still phasing in their increases, so there’s little actual data on the long-term impact of raising wages this significantly.
“This is getting into untested areas for minimum wage increases,” Baker says. “We just don’t have much basis for knowing at this point.”
But the trends in cities that have boosted their minimum wage levels above the federally-mandated $7.25 an hour: a decrease in the number of new businesses setting up shop, workers’ hours being cut and an improvement in the standard of living for large segments of the workforce.
“If you’re working less hours and still making more money, it’s a win-win,” argues Ken Rogers, chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
OTHER TRADEOFFS
In cities that have already increased their minimum wage, it’s noticeable that people aren’t hopping from job to job in an effort to earn a higher paycheck. For instance, the Center for Labor Research and Education found that when San Francisco’s airport raised employee wages in 2001, fewer workers quit their jobs, saving $6.6 million annually in recruiting and training costs. And a Harvard Business Review study revealed that when comparing wages between employees at two warehouse clubs, the company that paid higher salaries had a significantly lower turnover rate: 17 percent versus 44 percent.
Big picture, if more people earn a living wage, the number relying on Medicaid and food stamps could decline. According to a report by the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute, for every dollar the minimum wage goes up, government spending drops $5.2 billion.
That being said, more than 9.2 million minimum wage workers were employed by all levels of government in 2015, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. So any money saved by Uncle Sam in welfare assistance would possibly be canceled out by higher paychecks to these folks.
MORE HELPFUL READING ABOUT THE MINIMUM WAGE:
As Cities Raise Wages, States Push Back, The New York Times
Poll: Bipartisan Majority Supports Raising Minimum Wage, The Hill
Democrats’ $15 Minimum Wage Push Faces Tough Political Reality, Delaware Online
Eyeing the Trump Voter, ‘Fight for $15’ Widens Its Focus, The New York Times
Homepage photo by David McNew/Getty Images
The Jobs Robots Won’t Take
In April 2017, the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to the lowest level in a decade. And while there are many factors to consider, there’s evidence that automation and the rise of robots may not eliminate as many jobs as projected. Here are some of the sectors offering long-term job security for decades to come.
CLEAN ENERGY
The fastest growing profession in the country: wind turbine technicians.
Solar energy is also a bright spot for the unemployed and underemployed, “growing at a rate 12 times faster than the rest of the U.S. economy,” according a 2017 report published by Environmental Defense Fund. The majority of this growth consists of installation jobs. Robots can’t climb onto rooftops to mount photovoltaic panels (or repair them), which means there’s an ever-growing number of positions for living, breathing workers.
EDUCATION, HEALTHCARE AND CUSTOMER RELATIONS
“Where humanity matters there will be humans,” says business advisor and technology consultant Shelly Palmer.
Schools, hospitals and businesses continue to need workers to do “people things” since robots can only react to predictive behaviors or conduct menial tasks. “Robots do not yet have the ability to perform complex tasks like negotiation or persuading, and they are not as proficient in generating new ideas as they are at solving problems,” says Mynul Khan, chief executive officer of Field Nation in an op-ed for Tech Crunch.
To learn how education could adapt in an automated world, check out this additional reading:
How to Prepare for an Automated Future
ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE
The number of architectural and engineering jobs has more than tripled from last year’s average of 2,000 each month to 7,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the industry isn’t just having a moment. It’s estimated by 2022, biomedical engineering will experience 23 percent growth, environmental engineering 12 percent and civil engineering (the field with the most positions) 8.4 percent.
Fueling the demand for this non-automated workforce? An aging population and crumbling infrastructure.
MAINTENANCE
Call it “Rise of the Maintenance Workforce.” While robots are clearly putting pressure on the American labor force, when they break, humans are needed to fix them. The demand for people who can repair hardware and software, as well as code new programs, is expected to steadily increase. By 2022, there may be more than half a million new jobs in robotic and machine learning maintenance, installation and repair. Some labor experts project that modern technologies will ultimately create more jobs than they destroy.
This gradual shift can best be witnessed in U.S. manufacturing, which has shed almost 5 million jobs since 2000. The auto industry has introduced around 52,000 robots during the past seven years, helping to spur the creation of nearly 260,000 jobs. A 2013 study done by the International Federation of Robots (which despite its name is not made up of robots; rather it’s a group of tech industry leaders) estimated that 10 to 15 percent of jobs in the auto sector were created because robots and machines were introduced to assembly lines.
To learn more about how robotics is affecting manufacturing, check out this additional reading:
The New Hire: How a New Generation of Robots Is Transforming Manufacturing
How Artificial Intelligence and Robots Will Radically Transform the Economy
3 Cities Where Job Growth Is Happening
There were significantly fewer jobs added to the U.S. economy in March 2017, just 98,000, the smallest increase since May 2016. While the unemployment rate is 4.5 percent, underemployment continues to plague Americans, hovering around 14 percent in 2017. But there are a few bright spots where some people are getting back to work.
Beckley, W.Va.
The loss of 127,000 mining jobs has devastated the Appalachian region, but Beckley, W.Va., is proving that there’s employment opportunities post-coal.
Over the last 12 months, Beckley reduced its unemployment rate by 2.5 percent, the largest year-over-year decrease nationwide, according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Beckley is relying on strategic partnerships between development agencies, schools and businesses to create jobs. One such initiative, the New River Gorge Regional Development Authority, provides relevant employment training in forestry, agribusiness and manufacturing and funnels workers directly into jobs upon completion — often without the need to submit a resume.
WorkForce West Virginia, a state-run agency, also has a branch in Beckley. Paid, on-the-job training in high-growth fields like welding, electrical engineering and diesel technology is available to unemployed coal workers and displaced homemakers entering the workforce for the first time.
“It’s like the old saying: ‘As one door closes, another one opens.’ As a state, we have to work together to identify those doors and open them,” says Dr. John Deskins, director of West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research.
Ames, Iowa
Higher education does more than just improve one’s employment prospects. It’s also a job creator.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Ames, Iowa, has lowest unemployment rate in the nation: 2.1 percent. It’s held this designation 12 times in the past 24 months.
The key to Ames’s workforce boom? A longstanding employer.
“What can’t be understated in the Ames region is the presence of a large number of public sector employment opportunities with the presence of Iowa State University, where there has been considerable [job] growth over the last 36 months,” says Dan Culhane, CEO of the Ames Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Commission.
Fueling the college’s employment numbers is a 40 percent increase in enrollment during the past decade.
Culhane predicts this enrollment surge will cool within the next few years. To counteract it, the city is creating an internship program that will serve as an employment pipeline to retain recent university grads. It’s also making long-term investments by connecting industry leaders with local school districts to introduce students to employment opportunities in Ames.
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City successfully conquered homelessness, and now it’s doing the same for unemployment.
Tied with Denver for lowest unemployment rate in a city with more than 1 million residents (3.2 percent), Salt Lake City is taking a creative approach to jobs. Literally.
When Mayor Jackie Biskupski took office in January 2016, she elevated the city’s economic development division to its own department, creating an umbrella over business development, redevelopment, and interestingly enough, the arts council.
“Generally you don’t think of arts as economic development, but it is. People want to live in cool places,” says City Economic Development Director Lara Fritts. As part of its Cultural Core Action Plan, the city is incorporating public art into all development projects, creating jobs for local artists. Salt Lake City’s investment in arts and culture is paying off — the city was recently named the top U.S. city for millennials. And statewide, Utah is experiencing impressive growth in creative jobs: 3.7 percent compared to 2.9 percent in the other sectors.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT JOB CREATION, CHECK OUT THIS ADDITIONAL READING:
What the Unemployment Rate Does — and Doesn’t — Say About the Economy, Pew Research Center
Tech Jobs Are Thriving Nationwide — Up 7.3 million, USA Today
Series: Coal Is Dying — Coal Country Doesn’t Have to: Creating the Post-Coal Economy in Appalachia, Fast Company
Factors for Enabling the Creative Economy, World Economic Forum
For This Century-Old Civil Rights Nonprofit, the Real Work Is Just Beginning
The New York Urban League (NYUL) was founded in 1919, at the start of the Great Migration, to connect blacks who left the agricultural South with jobs in the industrial North. At the time, descendants of slaves poured into a metropolis where they had to fight against housing discrimination and boycott stores where black job applications weren’t accepted. Nearly a century later, Arva Rice, a NationSwell Council member and president of the New York Urban League, is continuing to fight for equality within New York City’s education system and job opportunities. NationSwell spoke to her recently about the ongoing fight for civil rights, as the nation’s first black president leaves office.
New York Urban League is approaching its centennial. What issues are you anticipating will be core to the league’s next century?
One challenge for us is how the conversation about race has changed over time. When I meet with others, I talk about the importance of this particular time in history. The fact that when I first came to the Urban League in April 2009, President Obama had just been elected and we were hearing, “You all have a president. That’s the ultimate level of equality.” Unfortunately, in the last seven years, we have also had Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and all things in between, like the intentional voter-suppression laws and attacks on the Voting Rights Act. The work we do is more critical than ever. There’s a generation that cares about racial equity, but we need to engage them in different ways. Maybe they want to march and be involved in grassroots movements, some want to be engaged in policy discussions and some want to become part of the establishment themselves and run for office. All of those ways are correct and right, and we have to figure out how to support that going forward.
Besides equal access to education and employment, the NYUL’s mission statement references working toward a “living environment that fosters mutual respect.” What does that mean to you?
Envisioning a world of mutual respect means that folks can not only tolerate but appreciate difference. I’m fascinated by how we define diversity and inclusion. Diversity is inviting people to a party, where inclusion is getting everyone to dance. I think that distinction is important, because to get everyone dancing, you have to think deliberately. You need to think about what is going to include people across generations, and most importantly, you need to be intentional in order to create environments that bring others to the fore. You have to be thoughtful, because it’s not going to happen by accident.
The racial biases pointed out by Black Lives Matter and the rising economic inequality in American cities were both on the minds of many voters last year. In what ways does New York reflect and buck the trends of what we expect from cities?
New York is often leading the way. We’re the ones who were really pushing for higher wages, with the Fight for 15 campaign. We’re also second place for technology and innovation. That’s why the New York Urban League is focusing some of our work on STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics], giving young people the opportunity to not only play with technology but also be creators. There are some folks that say, “Oh, people of color aren’t interested in tech, because it’s not cool enough.” And I push back on that. This is not about being cool; this is about being accessible. Without having somebody who you know, any experience, any interaction with someone who works at Facebook, Google, Twitter, how can they know that’s something they can do? We’re helping to break through that, and then provide skills. The fact is that people of color will be passed over if, once again, they are not included in intentional ways. The reason why I feel privileged to lead a historic black organization is because you’re constantly focused on making sure that there really is equality. Until the day we feel like there truly is real parity, we’re not finished.
What have you learned about leadership during your time at NYUL?
I have learned that leadership is about doing things that make your stomach hurt. And that just because your stomach hurts doesn’t mean that you’re unusual. If you are doing it right and pushing yourself and the people that you manage and your stakeholders and your donors, there are going to be times when it’s uncomfortable. It’s a growth pattern. The other thing I’ve learned is that the only people who don’t make mistakes are the ones who aren’t doing anything. So I need to forgive myself for those times I made mistakes, figure out what I learned, dust myself off and go on to the next thing.
What are you most proud of having accomplished so far?
We have a program called Empowerment Days for our young people, which is basically Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work days. We take 200 girls and 150 boys on the first and last Friday of March, respectively. They’re able to go and meet people at places like O, The Oprah Magazine, black enterprises, the Yankees, Google and Microsoft. Basically, they spend the day with people who may look like them or have similar backgrounds and experiences, and find out how they got into those careers. And one of the reasons I’m so proud of that is because we have a level of access, as an organization that has a 97-year history of impact on communities. So I can call people and get my calls returned at a level that I wasn’t able to in any other position in my career. Every time we do an Empowerment Day, the young people are excited about a senior vice president or a receptionist that they met. That’s fantastic, because we would not be able to do that, if it were not for the relationships that the Urban League has within the city.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
Continue reading “For This Century-Old Civil Rights Nonprofit, the Real Work Is Just Beginning”
The Standout Efforts That Are Getting Americans Back to Work
After four years as an assistant branch manager at Hudson Valley Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., Dora Coriano was laid off in August 2013, when the bank left the state.
Coriano, who’s 58, soon discovered that finding a new job wasn’t as easy as it had been the last time she’d been unemployed, 15 years prior. “In 1998, you could literally grab a stack of resumes and pound the pavement,” she says. “You went from door to door … you left your resume, you got called, and you got the job.”
A year after losing her position at the bank, and submitting more than 75 job applications, Coriano still hasn’t found full-time work. Instead, she has joined the ranks of the long-term unemployed.
“It’s been really disheartening,” Coriano says. “That’s how I feel — like I’m stuck.”
Despite a dropping unemployment rate, which hit 5.8 percent in October, 9 million people nationwide are like Coriano — stuck without a job.
Across the country, people are working to determine the best way to help those jobseekers find employment. Economists, analysts, policy-makers and not-for-profits are all seeking the antidote to unemployment, so they’re trying out different programs that train or retrain the jobless, help them achieve certifications or land internships.
Several approaches are showing promise. From paid apprenticeships to beefed-up community college programs and public-private partnerships, here’s a look at some of the ways people are getting back to work — including Coriano.
Placing Workers in Apprenticeships
Organizations looking to bridge the gap between job training and job placement are increasingly turning to the apprenticeship model. One of the most successful of these is Apprenticeship Carolina, an initiative of the South Carolina technical college system.
While Apprenticeship Carolina’s main focus is to help businesses that want to expand, says Brad Neese, program director, “a really positive byproduct is that these companies are going to hire South Carolinians.”
Funded by the state, Neese and his crew of consultants help companies to establish apprenticeship programs by connecting them with technical colleges around the state. “We meet with them and discuss the needs of the company,” says Neese. “We personalize the process, and it’s all free.”
So far, it’s working. Apprenticeship Carolina started with 90 companies in 2007. Today, it’s working with more than 700 businesses and over the past seven years has placed almost 11,000 apprentices (in fields ranging from manufacturing to health care).
Seeking Out Trained Talent
While training programs are reaching out to potential employers, some successful programs start the other way around.
In St. Louis, the aircraft company Boeing approached the local community college to set up a 10-week program for would-be assembly mechanics. The class is free for students (paid for by Boeing), and the company hires 87 percent of those who complete it, says Becky Epps, program director.
In Newark, N.J., the Ford Motor Co. sponsored an automotive technical program at the New Community Workforce Development Center. In nine months, students are trained and certified and then placed in jobs through established relationships with Ford, Nissan and Toyota, says the program’s director, Rodney Brutton.
“The placement rate is 60 percent, which is great in this line of work,” he says.
The Ford program helped a mechanic named Tom after he was laid off. Although he had 20 years’ experience, he found he couldn’t get another job without new certifications. All he heard was, “Leave your number and we’ll give you a call.” No one called.
After completing the program, Tom ended up getting 10 certifications, updated his resume and “started hearing from the dealerships,” he says.
Now, he says, he’s making over $25 per hour, and he’s no longer one of the country’s 9 million unemployed workers.
Linking Companies and Community Colleges
Community colleges can play a key role in workforce development. Recognizing that fact, the White House in September announced $450 million in grants to the schools, aimed at improving job training programs.
One popular movement in job training programs, according to Lauren Eyster, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, is to build strong connections with hiring companies, so that trainees can be channeled right into waiting jobs that need their new skills.
Both of these trends are converging at Cape Cod Community College, in West Barnstable, Mass., which won one of the recent federal grants. The school is creating two 12-month programs to train workers to inspect and repair airplanes and airplane engines, in response to the needs of area employers.
“There’s enormous support for this,” says Michael Gross, director of communication. He says the school has letters of support from JetBlue, Delta and Cape Air, which will be looking to hire the first graduates of the program.
Supporting Struggling Students
While community colleges can set people up for new careers, some students have significant obstacles to overcome first, like lack of transportation, child care or money for books.
“The other piece of this is, once you get them into these programs, how do you get them to complete?” says Eyster. “The latest number I saw was only 40 percent of community college students graduate in six years.”
Eyster says some colleges are starting to employ “navigators” to help guide students through school. At the Accelerating Opportunity: Kansas (AO-K) program at Washburn Tech, in Topeka, Kan., students learn technical skills while earning GEDs, with assistance from a navigator provided along the way.
“These students are under-resourced in every way you can imagine,” says Gillian Gabelman, associate dean at Washburn Tech. The navigator helps connect students to social services like child care and veterans benefits.
“The transformation of the students is extraordinary,” Gabelman says. For example, a woman who dropped out of high school to have a baby has been able to go into medicine, and a reformed drug addict went through technical training and is working for a local manufacturer, she says.
Reversing the Snowball of Unemployment
Now Coriano, the unemployed bank worker, may be on a new path to employment, too.
After a year without work, her savings dwindling, Coriano enrolled in a program in Bridgeport called Platform to Employment, aimed specifically at the long-term unemployed, who often face snowballing challenges.
The longer people are out of work, the less attractive they can be to employers and the more discouraged they get. Platform to Employment tries to address both of those challenges with a two-pronged approach.
The first is a full-time five-week course of job preparation classes. “It’s not a job training program,” says Tom Long, vice president of communications and development. “It’s more about taking someone who’s ready to be back at work and helping them improve their confidence and readiness.”
During the course, Coriano and other participants learn how to present their best selves to employers, to develop their “personal brand” and to “conquer their fear about their own limitations,” Long says. They also meet with a behavioral health specialist and learn how to deal with the stress and psychological struggles that come from long-term unemployment.
The second part of the Platform to Employment approach is to place participants in jobs with local employers for a two-month “tryout,” paid for by the program. The try-before-you-buy system allows employers to take a chance on a new employee with no financial risk, since private foundation funding pays for wages.
After a successful pilot program in Bridgeport in 2011, Platform to Employment recently completed a 10-city nationwide expansion. And, with $3.5 million in funding from the Connecticut Legislature, the program is spreading across that state.
A Nonprofit Specializing in Second Chances Gives One to an Aurora Theater Shooting Victim
After Marcus Weaver graduated from college, he landed in jail — a bumpy start to adulthood resulting from poor choices that he came to recognize were influenced by growing up with an abusive stepfather.
Weaver became determined to turn his life around, so when he was released from jail about eight years ago, he went to live at New Genesis, a transitional housing space in Denver. “They offered me a job,” he tells Elizabeth Hernandez of the Denver Post, “and I didn’t screw it up.”
Weaver did much more than just not screw up — he began to help his fellow shelter residents find job placements, clothes for work and places to live. Through his efforts, Weaver connected with DenverWorks, a nonprofit that helps find employment for low-income people with disabilities, criminal records and past addictions. The organization found a job for Weaver: working for them as a mentor to others.
“It felt really great, like this was my purpose,” he says. “If you can give a person a job, that changes everything for them. I felt really good for the first time in my life.”
But then on July 20, 2012, Weaver decided to see the premier of the film “The Dark Knight Rises” with a friend. Chaos erupted when a gunman opened fire inside the theater, killing Weaver’s friend, Rebecca Wingo, and shooting Weaver in the arm.
The trauma of losing his friend and suffering a serious injury on that horrific night rattled him, and he was unable to continue his job. Finally he went to therapy and was diagnosed with PTSD.
Even though Weaver’s arm is still not healed — another surgery is scheduled for November — in March he felt ready to apply for jobs. He found himself back at DenverWorks and now serves as their outreach coordinator since the nonprofit believed that everything he’d been through would make him a big asset mentoring people trying to right their lives after suffering hard knocks.
“I see a lot of my former self in the people I’m helping. You see them change. Get a suit, get an interview, get the job. It’s so important,” says Weaver.
Currently finishing up a degree in nonprofit management, Weaver hopes it might lead to starting his own nonprofit. However lofty his goals, anyone familiar with Marcus Weaver’s life story knows it would be foolish to ever count him out.
MORE: No Longer Afraid: A Young Immigrant Victim of the Aurora Theater Shooting Steps Out of the Shadows
How Second Chances Are Helping States Reduce Their Crime Rates
Being convicted of a crime can certainly have lifelong ramifications that don’t necessarily involve life behind bars without parole. It can mean a lifetime of unemployment.
Minneapolis-raised Kissy Mason witnessed this firsthand in her own family. “People in my family were being locked up, and then they were locked out of a right to live, a right to employment,” she told Nur Lalji of Yes! Magazine.
Seventy percent of people released from prison commit another crime within three years, and part of this recidivism rate is due in part to how difficult it is for them to find a job.
Mason was determined to make better choices for herself than those being made by her family members. But in 2006, she was involved in a domestic argument that escalated, leading to a felony conviction. Although she never went to jail — she served probation instead — whenever she filled out an application for employment, she had to check the ubiquitous box indicating that she was a convicted felon. This status also disqualified her for low-income Section 8 housing.
Instead of lamenting the situation, Mason worked to change it. She joined the campaign to “ban the box,” which was started by All of Us or None (a group founded by formerly incarcerated people that had difficulty finding work) in 2003. Since then, 12 states have removed this question from job applications. Employers can still conduct criminal background checks, but by the time they get that far in the hiring process, they’ve usually had a chance to study the applicant’s other qualifications.
Mason’s home state, Minnesota, enacted legislation banning the box in January 2014. Because of the initiative, one of the state’s major corporations, Target, has stopped using the check-off box on job applications not just in its Minnesota stores— but throughout the country.
“Sometimes people bar you from jobs forever because of one incident, and I don’t think that’s fair,” Mason told Lalji. “People should be given another chance. It shouldn’t be one time and you’re out.”
MORE: Meet A Former Big-City Police Chief Who Wants to Turn American Law Enforcement On Its Head
Which Cities Have the Most Designers?
Move over techies and engineers, there is a new industry coming to Silicon Valley: Design.
Design is an integral part of the creative economy that gives artistic people a lucrative career option. Not only is the industry beneficial for the artistic economy, but it helps the overall economy as well. As of 2013, 625,000 people were employed in the design industry, with graphic design being the biggest sector followed by architecture. Interestingly, during the recession, the number of employed designers remained stable. And with the median income at $24.55 per hour, designers bring jobs and money to their communities.
New York City and Los Angeles aren’t the only destinations for designers anymore. Now, many are gravitating to Silicon Valley and other parts of the country as the designing industry gets a high tech upgrade.
According to data from the labor market data and research firm EMSI, as well as City Lab, there are more self-employed designers in San Francisco and San Jose, California, than anywhere else in the United States.
NYC and L.A. still do dominate the fashion industry, thanks to their fashion schools, stores and businesses. But the surprising holder of third place? Columbus, Ohio, which is home to DSW, L Brands and Abercrombie and Fitch.
However, when it comes to other design careers, urban areas other than the largest coastal cities are tops. Architects should head to Seattle, San Francisco, or even Boston. And graphic designers should look for employment in Minneapolis-St. Paul, which leads the field due to its strong marketing and advertising industry, and San Francisco.
To learn more about the key cities and what makes them leaders, click here.
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